Month-in-Review Highlights: July 2020
A Zaric statue in the Rotillon neighborhood of Lausanne, Switzerland. July 22, 2020.
I postmortem each month shortly after it ends, reflecting on what happened in general and, more specifically, in the context of my goals. Though I don’t share all my insights here, I have made it a practice to share at least one key highlight or insight. (To read previous months’ reviews, click here.)
Reflecting on July 2020 feels a lot like reflecting on every month this year so far: So much has happened, and yet all of it seems like a strange, amorphous blur.
Overall, I had a positive month.
As much as I hate doing taxes each year, I always feel a sense of relief when I’ve completed them. This year’s delay of tax time from April to July didn’t give me relief as much as it simply prolonged my tax-related stress.
Also, early in the month, I set up a new space in the apartment for my office, replete with a proper desk and a door that I can close to reduce noise and distraction during my work calls and focus time.
On the celebration end of the spectrum of events, we celebrated our second anniversary by going out to a nice dinner on a beautiful restaurant terrace across the lake in Evian, France:
We rarely dined out before the crisis and really hadn’t dined out since the crisis, so this felt adventurous (and vaguely otherworldly).
However, when it comes to my activity related to 2020 objectives, I finished the month feeling a little low in terms of accomplishment.
I mentioned in my June postmortem that we all just need to keep stepping, and I kept that advice top of mind.
Throughout the month, I took the steps and, as my sales coach so often told me I must, “did the behaviors” without seeing much by way of concrete progress. Yes, I do hope that it will all culminate in an arrival eventually—but this month, it felt like a lot of spinning wheels.
Although we wondered at FrogDog whether this summer would have a changed pattern than normal, given the COVID-19 crisis and its attendant issues, it seems to have mostly followed the normal routine: Though people may not have gone on their typical summer vacations, their minds have shifted away from work priorities as always during the height of the summer months.
The political, social, and economic climate in the United States and abroad has likely only exacerbated and extenuated the normal summer discombobulation. After all, the pandemic hasn’t gotten better. Political upheaval hasn’t improved. The economy continues to suffer. People are exhausted and afraid.
These don’t comprise good conditions for bringing in new business.
Hearing endlessly bad stories from other business executives hasn’t helped my mood much; over the past few months—and July brought no exceptions—one call after another has had me in conversation with business executives reporting layoffs, financial stresses, and uncertainty about the future. On a call at the end of the month, a business owner said that most every business she knew right now was debating whether to call it quits entirely or do whatever it could to reduce the bleed, try to survive 2020, and hope for better in 2021.
I can’t imagine that August will carry with it a shift to more positive stories and, concurrently, movement on the business-development front. At least on the latter count, August rarely does. However, FrogDog has weathered other storms and we’ll weather this one as well; we provide such needed (and, per our clients, valued) marketing guidance and support and I have a lot of pride in my team. We’ll keep stepping, and in doing so we’ll help ourselves and so many other people, too.
Therefore, I head into August maintaining my “keep stepping” mindset and reminding myself that the payoff won’t come until fall at the earliest—and we can absolutely handle that.
How has summer 2020 treated you so far?